


The Deep End

by luninosity



Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Crossword Puzzles, First Kiss, Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a dark and stormy night, and James would be kind if Michael looked him in the eyes and said <i>I love you. </i>And Michael could handle any possible response but that. Anything but James being kind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deep End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves) in the [mcfassy_autumn_extravaganza_2014](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/mcfassy_autumn_extravaganza_2014) collection. 



> No disrespect intended, only doing this out of affection! Title and opening lines from the Arctic Monkeys' “R U Mine?”; for alby_mangroves' prompt of 'rain, pining, it's a Wednesday' for the 2014 McFassy AE Fest.

  
_ guess what I’m tryin’ to say is I need the deep end _   
_ keep imagining meeting, wished away entire lifetimes _   
_ unfair we’re not somewhere misbehaving for days, great escape _   
_ lost track of time and space… _   


  
It was a dark and stormy night.   
  
It would, in fact, have been difficult for the night to be any darker and more stormy. Wind yanking leaves off trees. Branches quivering unhappily, drenched in teardrop rain. Clouds skulking around buildings and distant landmarks and pavement in sullen idleness.   
  
James was sitting with one foot tucked up beneath him on Michael’s sofa, scowling merrily at a crossword puzzle; he had a blanket over his shoulders because Michael’d gazed at him five minutes earlier and then gotten up to find the one off his bed and tuck snugly-quilted armor around chilly freckles. James had looked up, startlement in Highland-sky eyes, and after a second smiled.   
  
James got cold too easily. Got cold, and sick: asthma, allergies, that once-injured knee that might be aching from the ceaseless weight of the storm. James generally treated this evidence of human fragility as a minor inconvenience, and went right ahead with doing his own stunts and throwing himself on the altar of charity football matches. Michael wanted to kiss him and shout at him and wrap him in cotton wool and let him go on doing everything, because that was James.   
  
He said, reading upside down, “Fourteen across is ‘boxty’.”   
  
“Hmm? Oh. Of course you’d know that, Irish potato pancake…which is immediately my new favorite nickname for you. Sorry.” James glanced up from the book—paper and pencil, not because he’d brought it over but because Michael knew that he liked the dry inviting murmur of pages and had consequently accidentally-on-purpose left a collection of crosswords out on the table—and ran a hand through his hair. Michael’s heart performed somersaults and handsprings.   
  
Wednesday night, he thought. Wednesdays hurt.    
  
James’d teased him once, joking, about Tuesdays: I’m attracted to you a little. Sometimes. On Tuesdays.   
  
Wednesdays came after Tuesdays, so those hurt, and Mondays came before Tuesdays, so those hurt too, and Thursdays and Fridays and Saturdays and Sundays, well. Those weren’t Tuesdays either, about as far away as they could get, and _that_ hurt.   
  
Michael never wanted to think about Tuesdays _on_ Tuesdays. That didn’t hurt. That _eviscerated_.   
  
Years ago, that’d been. The first X-Men film. The moment he’d realized he’d never be able to give his whole heart to anyone else ever again. It, and he, belonged to James.   
  
Who was yawning, stretching—that knee received an absentminded quick rub, and Michael’s pulse jumped—and raising a perceptive eyebrow his direction. “Everything all right? Were you opposed to potato pancake as a nickname? I wasn’t actually serious.”   
  
“No,” Michael said, “I know, and I’m not, y’know, objecting, um, cranachan,” which made James dissolve into delighted laughter at the comparison. James _would_ make a delicious Scottish cinnamon-and-cream dessert, Michael decided, and smiled a little, even while the hollow space in his chest twinged.   
  
The rain bustled down, busy drowning the world. London in the grip of the elements, water and air at play.    
  
James had come over nominally to discuss character notes and plans for the next X-Men film, not that they needed much these days. On the same page as usual. Picking up each other’s thoughts, finishing sentences. So easy it was, with James; and they’d batted around motivations for about half an hour and then wandered off into debates over vodka tonic versus vodka tonic plus lime, and whether the new BMW bikes were worth taking a look at for the price, and could those honestly be the lyrics to “Invisible Touch” by Genesis or was James making them up…   
  
James had been. Michael’d nearly fallen off the sofa laughing. James had an exceedingly dirty mind and unfairly trust-inducing eyes. Michael’d been halfway to believing him about precisely what was being invisibly touched.   
  
_ So _ beautiful. Beautiful and funny and clever and fearless and short and kind, kind above everything else really, kind in the way that drove him to perform sky-dives for charitable causes and comprehend every last one of his characters as _people_ , flawed and preposterous and human and amazing. Kind in maybe only the way, Michael’d thought more than once, that someone could be when that someone’s blue eyes knew exactly how deep the wounds could cut when a father, for example, walked out of a door and never chose to walk back home.   
  
James would be kind if Michael looked him in the eyes and said _I love you_. James would always be kind.   
  
Michael could handle any possible response but that. Anything but James being kind.   
  
He said, “Can I get you anything else? Coffee? Irish coffee? Potato pancakes?”   
  
James laughed again, cheerful as the rain. “You very much don’t want me heading home tonight, do you. Irish coffee, honestly, I’ll start quoting Star Trek monologues at you…”   
  
“I’m not complaining.” He laced his hands together so they wouldn’t reach across the cushion-width between him and James. “I’ve seen you more drunk than this. I’ve seen you getting other people more drunk than this. Also, no, you’re not getting on the bike in this weather.”   
  
“I’ll make cinnamon rolls in the morning, then.” This was both an enticement and a routine, by now. James’s baked-goods talents were legendary among film casts and crews. Michael, who’d slept over at James’s flat and had James crash at his on any number of occasions, knew that no matter how early he awakened he’d find sleepy-kitten blue eyes conjuring decadence in his kitchen. He loved every bite, and died with each one, each time he couldn’t explain that James didn’t have to, James never had to, James never had to say thank you.   
  
“If you’re staying you can have the bed,” he tried. This was also routine. So was the headshake, and the laugh, in reply. Never worked. Never stopped him from offering.   
  
He went and found a spare pair of pyjama pants and James’s pillow—no, no, he went and found _a_ pillow, not James’s, not the way Michael’s heart belonged to James—and returned to discover that sunshine-freckle fingers had filled in nine-tenths of the crossword. James announced, flipping pencil around in one expressive hand, “We’re in here,” and Michael came over, arms full of fluff, and said, “We are not.”   
  
“We so are. ‘Professor X’s nemesis, not secretly.’”   
  
Not a secret identity— “…Erik?”   
  
“Perfect.” James grinned. Every atom of the universe danced. “Even the crossword puzzle-writers know we’re inseparable.”   
  
“I think,” Michael noted, throwing the pyjama pants at him, “everyone knows that, after you and the press tours. Why don’t Erik and Charles get married and have babies, you said.”   
  
“Well, they fuckin’ should! I mean…both. With the fucking, and all. I’d sign on for that script.”   
  
Michael, around the abrupt and inevitable and constant heartbreak, said, “You and your filthy mouth, if the X-Men could hear you, Professor…and they’d never, y’know, do it. The studio. That script.”   
  
James looked briefly thoughtful. “They might if we helped finance it. And if you and I wanted to. I said I was attracted to you, and that ended up all over the internet, have you seen the fan—”   
  
“No. And no.” Short words. Cracking ice. Deep terrible unsafe water underneath. Flailing last-ditch dives for shore.   
  
James blinked. “No? To which part? You’ve not seen the—”   
  
“No to— I’m going to _bed_ , James.” Too curt and he knew it. The ice kept on splintering, and he had to find solid ground.   
  
James’s expression went from amused to hurt to concerned in a single heartbeat. Michael only saw the hurt because he’d become an expert in James over the years, watching blue eyes get tipsy or excited or melancholy or scared. Memorizing every silent indrawn breath when that knee wobbled after a day of stunt training, when James’s father chose the loudest possible tabloid rag to publicly wish his son a happy birthday while unsubtly requesting that James share some of that success, preferably financial.   
  
James was an incredible actor. The hurt was gone in a snap. Replaced by worry over Michael, an act of compassion so gutwrenching that Michael almost wanted to laugh, except for how he wanted to weep. He managed a step toward the hallway. Two.   
  
“Everything okay? Can I help?”   
  
And it all shattered, then: his voice and the night and the thunder booming overhead. “It’s Wednesday.”   
  
“Er,” James said, now also on his feet, Michael’s quilt slipping down to puddle in distress on the floor. “Yes?”   
  
In for a penny, in for a pound of flesh, Michael’s heart decided, and went right on talking despite his efforts to shut it up. “You can’t—don’t—not about—it’s not fair, not Wednesdays, Tuesdays I can sort of live with, I _have_ , but you can’t make every day—I can’t _do_ this every day—”   
  
He stopped, chest heaving though he’d not run anywhere, feeling like he ought to be about to cry, but the tears just sat in a hot ball of anguish in his throat and refused to spill. James was staring at him.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Michael said, in the pause after the thunder, before the flash and sear of lightning. The gap. The broken uncompleted pair. “I’m sorry.”   
  
“Wait,” James said, standing still, looking up at him. “You don’t want me to—to joke about that. Tuesdays. Or Wednesdays, now—”   
  
“I _can’t_.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
Another pause. A thousand more moments of tiny personal apocalypse.   
  
“I’ll just—” James waved a hand at Michael’s living room and by extension the dismal rain-splattered grey streets beyond. “I can go. If you want. If you—I can go.”   
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Michael said, “it’s storming cats and dogs and ferrets or something, you can’t go out in that,” and then they looked at each other, and then away.   
  
“You can stay,” he said, “just—I don’t know, don’t worry, please,” and then took two steps over and picked up the blanket because that was something he could do. “Come on.”   
  
He got James warm again, tucked into place on his sofa, safe from the vicissitudes of weather and icy rain. And then he turned to go—a retreat and he knew it, but if ever he could be allowed cowardice surely that time was now.   
  
And then James’s voice said softly: “Michael?”   
  
He turned back.   
  
James, tiny and owl-rumpled amid quilt-mounds and lamplight, was looking at the book of crosswords on the coffee table; but his gaze went to Michael’s face, after a second. “You—I have to ask. I can’t not ask. I’m sorry. You said not to joke about it. You can’t. Tuesdays. Why?”   
  
“You know why,” Michael said, because James must, James had to; how could he not? “Because it’s real.”   
  
Another rain-suffused silence. As if James was having to turn the words around in his head, to try to understand, and finally to repeat them for the sake of comprehension. “Because…it’s real for you.”   
  
“Yes.” What else? What more could he say? Here’s my heart, lying at your feet? Trample it if you want, I’ll love you regardless, you’re worth loving always?   
  
“About that.” James got up, wrapping himself in Michael’s quilt, sock-clad feet noiseless on the aged wood floor. Michael couldn’t decipher his expression. “What if I meant it? What if it’s Wednesday, and I meant it?”   
  
“You—”   
  
“I only made it a joke, the first time,” James murmured, not quite smiling—not there yet—but with something like tentative hope beginning to tug at the corners of eyes, the edges of lips, “because I never thought you would. Come on, who'd look twice at me as _me_ , not Robbie Turner or Charles Xavier or Tom Lefroy or any of that, y’know?”   
  
“You’re wonderful,” Michael said, “you don’t _know?_ ” and then, “you _don’t_ know,” because he knew that was true, could see that truth the way he’d never entirely understood it until that precise instant.    
  
He took a step closer. James’s eyes got wider, trembling between disbelief and desire.    
  
He said, very very gently, “I don’t even do crosswords, I just leave them around for you.”   
  
The sun came out in full force, shining over sapphire waters, bursting through tempests, when James smiled.   
  
Michael lifted eyebrows, tried to beckon with expression and open arms; James laughed, radiant and a little astonished, and dove across the last tiny distance into his arms, tripping over quilt-tendrils, clumsy and safe when Michael’s hands steadied him. The rain chattered away; James, unafraid and lovely, breathed, “I might be attracted to you every day, not just fuckin’ Tuesdays,” and slid a hand up to touch Michael’s face, to cup his cheek.   
  
Michael leaned down, his own lips millimeters from tempting happy ones, next breath shared and brushing over soft skin; James shivered very satisfactorily. Michael whispered, “Today’s a Wednesday,” to which James started to say, “Yes?” Michael interrupted this question with, “I like Wednesdays,” and kissed him there in the flat with a gleeful blanket slithering down around their feet and the crescendo of the night outside, dark and stormy and electric and gloriously alive.


End file.
